London - Edward Rutherfurd [544]
“Do you wear those moccasins and smoke that pipe every evening, Colonel Meredith?”
“As a matter of fact I do,” he confessed.
“Won’t you show us before we go? I’m sure,” Violet boldly continued, “that my mother would like to see you in your natural state.”
“Really, Violet!” Mary Anne felt herself blushing helplessly.
Meredith, however, seemed to find it rather amusing. “Just wait a moment,” he said, and left the room.
When he returned a couple of minutes later he was wearing a magnificent red dressing-gown of Oriental silk brocade and on his head he wore a red fez. His feet, encased in white silk socks, slipped easily into the moccasins, and he sat down very comfortably in the chair by the fire, expertly filled the pipe, kneading the tobacco into the bowl, lit it, and began to draw.
“Will that do?” he enquired, looking at them both.
But if the sight of Meredith, as her daughter had put it, in his natural state, was disturbing to Mary Anne, it was nothing to the sensation she had when, as they finally left, he took her hand, pressed it discreetly, and said softly:
“I hope we may meet again.”
“It’s a quandary, old girl. There’s no doubt about it.” The Earl of St James shook his head. “The trouble is, you see, the Cutty Sark’s never been beaten.”
That was, in fact, only half the trouble. The first and most urgent problem was that two days before, Mr Gorham Dogget had arrived from Boston and declared that, immediately after Christmas, he was taking his wife and daughter away from the damp winter for a three-month cruise on the Nile and the Mediterranean. Whether Nancy and her mother were to return to London afterwards was not decided.
The problem with the Cutty Sark was her sturdiness. Her redoubtable captain could put on more canvas than any other master would dare and still the clipper would plough safely on in the roughest seas.
“Barnikel may say he can beat her, and he may be right, but it’s too great a risk,” the earl continued. “We’re out of time.”
Lady Muriel had a box of dried fruit. She was munching thoughtfully.
“There’s nothing for it,” St James concluded. “I’m going round tomorrow to propose.”
There were some people who laughed at Esther Silversleeves behind her back, though this was a little unfair. She certainly meant no harm.
Perhaps she would have been more confident, if only her sisters’ husbands had not been so successful. Jonas and Charlotte Barnikel, though the sea captain had made a small fortune from his many voyages, had remained very comfortably the solid, seafaring tradespeople that they were. The Pennys, on the other hand, being a well-established City family, moved in a far more elevated circle, attended the City livery company dinners and even went to the opera at Covent Garden now and then. As for the Bulls, they had become so rich now that their children were mixing with young ladies and gentlemen on almost equal terms. With Arnold Silversleeves and his wife however, it was rather different. Their house was pleasantly situated, some four miles out from central London on the northern hill of Hampstead, not far from the big open spaces of Hampstead Heath. Many of the houses there were fine, or charming. Theirs – though neither of them realized it – was not. Its tall, awkward gables reminded one of the angular Mr Silversleeves himself. It was spacious however and, thanks to her money, they were never in the slightest want.
Arnold Silversleeves had remained a partner of Grinder and Watson until his recent retirement. His engineering was respected. Yet somehow the projects in which he involved the firm never seemed to be very profitable. Either he chose them for their technical challenge, or his own perfectionism eroded the profit margins. Well before his retirement there was a faint trace of impatience perceptible in the other partners when they addressed him. As for rising in the social scale, it would simply never have occurred to him. The family was respectable